


Shifting Opinions

by magdalyna



Series: Cultverse [7]
Category: Bandom
Genre: Cannibalism, Cults, Dubious Morality, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-03
Updated: 2013-11-03
Packaged: 2017-12-31 08:57:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1029781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magdalyna/pseuds/magdalyna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Andy finds a new way of dealing with life's little mishaps.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shifting Opinions

The burger is a soft weight in his hands. The bun is whole wheat, the vegetables varied and abundant. The meat is lightly seasoned but perfectly flavored. The first bite is juicy and savory. 

Andy will enjoy his ‘vegetarian’ burger after a show well done, uninterested in the hustle and bustle around him. Pete gives him a little smirk and he smiles around his food, returning the grin. 

 

It didn’t pop out of their heads fully evolved and with teeth, like some monstrous Athena. Instead it whirled out of control, careening past all compassionate rational thought, blooming from a need to be chillingly pragmatic. It suited Andy very well. 

It started because a meat packing plant was the closest and quickest way to get rid of a fresh body. 

Andy and Joe had been there for that failed conversion. Pete was livid. 

It was the first body that didn’t accept Pete’s Truth, wouldn’t become a Believer. Pete couldn’t understand it, went too far with roughing the kid up. His Truth was meant to be spread and grow, to be followed. It wasn’t meant to be spit upon, struggled against. Rejected. 

Andy managed to talk sense into Pete; that they needed to get rid of the body quickly, not discard it and flee into the night like scared children. People had seen the soon-to-be blasphemous scene kid leave the venue with them. They had to be practical now or everything would be lost. Joe nodded in agreement, breathing slower. 

Pete visibly calmed down a bit and they set to work, stripping the body and divvying up work. 

Joe luckily knew of an incinerator nearby where he could toss the body’s belongings. Andy didn’t ask him how he knew this.

They didn’t take it all with them, as it turns out. Bone and hair and skin and organs weren’t useful to any of them so Pete and Joe tossed them into the waiting flames while Andy dealt with the meat. 

Andy hadn’t had to touch meat since he moved out of his mother’s apartment. He found process to be unnerving. For once, his sound drumming away inside of him slowed, nearly stopped. Became less than a whisper. And there was the fact that Andy was cutting up, shoving human flesh into a meat grinder. Something vague snarled inside of his head, said this was going too far. He ignored that voice, because Pete and Joe and Patrick (innocent, unaware Patrick) needed him to do this. He had to focus. The Message came first. He was half of the Message, he couldn’t screw this up. 

Then they found themselves with another problem: what to do with all that ground up flesh. 

Joe rolled his eyes and sniped that they were in a meat packing plant, why not leave it? Or package it up to take with them? 

Andy and Pete watched as Joe’s eyes glittered at this last suggestion. Joe had a way with dares. 

Andy grit his teeth and explained that the plant was clean and not in use, that there was no meat to hide their … “contribution” among. That this particular plant had quality control issues and would be on new meat like a hawk if they left 35 something pounds of ground up emo waif behind. It was all over the local newspapers after all. 

Pete decided that they’d package it all and take it with them. 

Once the meat was nice and tidy, the useless markers of humanity burned away, it was fairly easy to slip away into the night. 

Joe was adamant that they toss their bloody, worked over clothes along with the skin and bone but it was Pete who had the brilliant ember of thought to dispose of them using a random laundromat. 

Once they were back in their hotel room it was Andy who was the one who brought up the fact that they had roughly 35 pounds of meat that would spoil, was evidence. 

_Needed to be destroyed._

“So eat it,” Pete said; eyes dark and unreadable. 

Joe watched them, wondering “Are people Kosher?” aloud. 

Andy had to laugh, deep and quick. 

“I will if you will,” they said to Pete in unison. Andy didn’t think Pete would actually do it, he certainly didn’t mean it. But Joe was smiling slightly. There a lot of things Andy doesn’t ask Joe. 

Pete studies them for a moment then shrugs. “Alright. But do we even have any pots and pans?” 

“If we don’t, we could just go buy some,” Joe supplied and it just kept building from there. 

 

Once they dared Pete into eating the meat, Joe readily munched on burgers and steaks that Andy cooked and one disastrous attempt at making a … special hot dog that Joe himself attempted. 

Andy was vegan for a reason though. 

“You know, it’s not like people are an endangered species who need all the numbers they can get. And that burger you made was really good,” Pete says to him, after watching his reaction to him and Joe eating some of the meat closely. 

Which is true, Andy decides. People don’t deserve this glorious planet they have if they just ruin it with pollution and war and deforestation. It was the basis for his entire philosophy. Why not eat heretics who would snub a chance to be saved by Pete’s Message, his Belief? Their Truth. 

So he had a burger from the remaining flesh left from the first outright heretic. It felt entirely anticlimactic. Pete was always saying he was an excellent cook and now Andy had a reason to believe Pete’s praise. He made a damn good burger, if he did say so himself. 

 

It became their preferred method of dealing with those few who wouldn’t convert, wouldn’t let Pete save them. Pete still is viciously, angrily baffled by these refusals. 

Andy and Joe have the beginnings of an impressive and useful knife collection between them for just this purpose. Simplicity is a virtue Joe still abides by. 

Patrick, bless him, never asks for a bite of their burgers, keeps his thoughts of Andy eating non-vegan products to himself. If he even notices. Andy likes to think that Patrick is above the necessary workings of the Message and wants to keep it that way. 

Pete even dares Dirty to eat some of the meat raw, never tells him what he’s eaten. Joe has a smile that reaches his eyes for days. 

 

Their show that afternoon is amazing. Everything went perfectly. Andy was on top of his game. They might have even converted a few skeptical fans in the crowd. 

Andy walks with Pete to the bus area and sits at a picnic table, digging out a ‘vegetarian’ burger from a cooler labeled ‘Food’. He bites in, Pete smirking at him. 

He’s outdone himself this time in making his burger. Maybe this is what Iowa tastes like. 

He grins back at Pete.


End file.
